The Soyvestors STEAM Project aims to promote STEAM education in secondary schools through investigations of soybean cultivation. It not only builds on the expertise of university scientists, educators, and secondary teachers to teach the younger generations, but also integrates frontier soybean research with STEM technology and teaching models.

On July 17 to 21, a group of S.3 and S.4 students from our school joined the Gansu study tour organized by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Soyvestors Co. Limited and Big Education Platform. With Prof. Lam Hon Ming, Dr. Anthony Tse, Prof. Chan Ting Fung and Dr. Lau Kwok Chi Victor leading and lecturing the tour with 80 participating students and teachers, we together visited the farmlands at Zhangye, Jiuquan and Wuwei where they are at north-western part of China with dry and salinized soil. Three cross-breeding soybeans (隴黃1、隴黃2、隴黃3) were planted at there, for one thing to help alleviate soil deterioration and increase productivity; for another to collect field and greenhouse data from the beans and used genome-sequencing technology to locate the chromosome region that contained the gene for salt tolerance.

On top of the visit, students also had to present their learning outcomes on the last evening the tour. We were honoured that our student, Ho King Lam, was selected by CUHK professors as one of the two best presenters. Despite the fact that the field was short, it was however an eye-opening field trip to both teacher and students.